The Greek-Turkish land border on the Evros River is a restricted military area. Only rarely does the Greek government provide visual impressions of what is happening there. Asylum seekers regularly report mistreatment by Greek and Turkish authorities.
The photos that the Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis shared on Twitter a few days ago are all the more surprising. The pictures show around twenty naked men in a meadow surrounded by reeds.
They cover their sex with their hands. Some of them are crouching on the ground, lined up as if someone had ordered them to take that position.
According to the Greek Ministry of Migration, the men in the picture are part of a group of 92 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Morocco and Iran. The ministry says the men were forced by Turkish authorities to undress and then crossed the Evros River to the Greek side in small boats. There the Greek police would have picked them up.
Migration Minister Mitarakis spoke of a “crime against civilization” and called on Ankara via Twitter to initiate an investigation. The European border protection agency Frontex was also involved in the operation. At the request of Deutsche Welle, the agency said that Frontex officers operating on Evros “assisted the Greek authorities in the rescue of 14 of the 92 migrants last Friday (October 14, 2022).”
The men were “almost naked”. Some had visible injuries. When asked, Frontex confirmed that the Greek police located the men and then asked Frontex for help.
Turkey rejects the allegations. Ankara accuses Athens of treating migrants inhumanely and covering up illegal pushbacks. Turkish Interior Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticized the Greek site for using the photos of the naked men without sharing precise data on the time or place of the incident.
A request from Deutsche Welle to the responsible Ministry for Civil Protection in Athens to share the metadata of the photographs or to comment on the incident went unanswered.
Tugce Duygu Koksal, migration lawyer and director of the Center for Human Rights in Istanbul, refers to the moment when the Minister of Migration published the photos: “The tweet came shortly after the OLAF report was published accusing Greece of human rights abuses in illegal to tolerate repatriations.”
Koksal suspects that by publishing the images, the Greek authorities are trying to divert attention from negative reactions to the content of the report by OLAF, the European Anti-Fraud Office.
In mid-October 2022, the news magazine Spiegel published the OLAF report on Frontex’s role in pushbacks on the Greek-Turkish border. With pushbacks, refugees are denied the right to apply for asylum at the border. However, this violates applicable European and international law.
The authors of the report conclude that Frontex knew about the Greek authorities’ breaches of the law and thus covered them up. Online chats and e-mails available to the authorities show that the Fundamental Rights Officer responsible was not informed of concrete suspected cases of human rights violations. According to media reports, in April 2022 the pressure on Frontex was so great that the then director Fabrice Leggeri resigned.
During a debate in the European Parliament, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johannsson, supported the border protection agency. The Evros incident shows how important Frontex’s role is at Europe’s external borders.
Omer Shatz, international law expert and legal director of the non-governmental organization Front-Lex, told DW that according to European law, the use of Frontex in Greece must be ended immediately in view of the human rights situation: “Commissioner Johannsson’s pathetic attempt to abuse the 92 migrants as a fig leaf , is nonsensical. If anything, the incident shows that Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees,” said Shatz. The responsibility does not lie solely with Frontex, but also with the EU Commission and the EU member states, who tolerate the violations of the law at the European external borders.
The Greek Ministry of Migration said that the migrants apprehended on the Evros are currently still in police custody and will be transferred to the Fylakio reception and registration center in the coming days. For years, the media and non-governmental organizations have been reporting violence against asylum seekers at Europe’s external borders, both from the Greek and from the Turkish side. Observers criticize that the new incident on the Evros shows once again how people seeking protection are used for political games.
The Greek NGO Mobile Info Team in Thessaloniki told DW that the Evros incident was not an isolated case, but that there had long been excessive violence against migrants at the Greek external borders, but also at home, including “forced violence.” Disrobing, arbitrary police custody, the use of electronic shock weapons, as well as physical and verbal violence.” The loss of human rights and the rule of law at Europe’s external borders is shameful.
Autor: Florian Schmitz (Thessaloniki), Burcu Karakaş (Istanbul)
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The original of this article “Political games on the backs of migrants: dispute between Athens and Ankara” comes from Deutsche Welle.